Reveal Mask Improvements

[Hubrice]

Just wanted to bump/add-on to this. I now use a 40" TV, laying on the table, as my play surface, and with the right tweaking I can zoom my maps (player view) to a 1" scale for use with minis. Being able to reveal by squares, or predefined shapes would be nice.

As would a "template" overlay that would be a shaded region that could show where a spell might land, or the range of an attack. This should also be a toggled reveal, with the option to have several templates at once.

[mirtos]

How did you do this? I've been wanting to do something like that for a while....

What sort of TV did you use? and how do you zoom your maps? is it touch screen?

[Hubrice]

Originally Posted by mirtos

How did you do this? I've been wanting to do something like that for a while....

What sort of TV did you use? and how do you zoom your maps? is it touch screen?

I use a Sharp Quatro (??) LED 40" TV, non-touch screen, laying on its back. I prop it up by the base so that it is slightly angled. This allows the players to see it better and keeps the TV's weight off of the HDMI cable.

I have to use HDMI because the DVI/VGA connectors would stick straight out of the back. I thought about removing the case, building a new one, resoldering...and realized that was too large of a project at this time.

Set the TV to a flipped landscape (because it has to lay upside down to the players) and point RW to use it as the Player-view monitor. I then use a Smart Image map and the zoom controls from within RW to get the scale close.

It's not quite 1"x1", but it's close enough that minis can be used. I can then use the reveal brushes to show the areas the players have explored.

Touch-screen would be the dream, or some sort of RF sensor and tags.

[mirtos]

ive been trying to figure some form of touch screen that i could use with maptool/realms works/roll20, etc...

Wanted to use virtual minis, because then you can do things like reveal line of sight etc...



havent had much luck yet.

[Fuzzy]

Building a proper table for it from scratch would be the best method, as you could create the wooden structure, and use a Plexiglass cover over it, with proper wooden tabletop around the plexiglass center. This would provide proper tabletop around all sides for the players to use, while still providing a 'built-in' feel to the display. The plexiglass then allows continuing to use dry erase markers for augmentations and such.

Of course, this would be far better with a proper VTT implementation, working with tokens, line-of-sight, area-of-effect bubbles, etc.

If you know you are going to implement something like this, the first thing you should do is measure the dpi of your display. Then, when creating your maps, scale the image so that it is a proper size for your dpi to make the grid 1". That way, when the image is zoomed a perfect 100%, it's scaled properly for the display.

[Fuzzy]

Can you imagine a proper VTT implementation that was designed properly for 'around the display' view? Where you could tell it where each player is sitting, and it will display key stats for that player's character right at the edge of the screen, right in front of that player, oriented properly for him/her? Fun times...

[Silveras]

Before the Surface was a tablet, it was a table. And on that table, some students built a VTT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXsFNPO_gUM

[Fuzzy]

It's still a table, it's called PixelSense, the current best model is made by Samsung (the SUR40). It runs about $12,000 last I checked. As awesome as the surface reading would be, it's not entirely necessary - cool - but not necessary.

[Bidmaron]

+1 here plz

[Farling]

+1 for setting up predefined areas to be revealed (it will save game timw when drawing the area carefully to hide the existence of secret doors/areas).